


it's got its teeth in you

by gearyoak



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Outsider Perspective, Temporary Character Death, frank gets his ass kicked and made fun of, it's what he deserves, other characters are mentioned but not enough for me to want to tag them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:35:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26565955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gearyoak/pseuds/gearyoak
Summary: In the seconds that follow, his vision goes black around the edges, red in the middles. His breathing shudders and it’s hard to push from his chest. In an act of inhuman strength, the Legion drags him up enough to drape Jeff across one of his shoulders. By the time he’s being dropped onto the hook, he’s barely conscious. But even when he wakes up, he’s still wondering the same thing he was when he’d bled out in an open field.Who the fuck was Danny Johnson to the Legion?-introducing your relationship with a serial killer to your friends and family, a three part drama
Relationships: Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/Frank Morrison
Comments: 6
Kudos: 89





	it's got its teeth in you

**Author's Note:**

> alright don't look at me. 
> 
> i wrote this in an hour, read it over one (1) time for "editing" and now i'm here posting this. ain't that some shit. 
> 
> i don't play this game often. it's gonna be evident in the vagueness of settings and characterization. if there's anything you'd like to see tagged, let me know and i'll tag it. same with mistakes, i'll fix those too.

1.

As things go, it probably made the most sense that Julie is the first to notice. 

Things have changed since they got swallowed whole by the Fog, that goes without saying. Time doesn’t move, injuries aren’t permanent, death is more of a game rather than a lasting thing. Her strength is new, her intentions are temporarily skewed, not always her own.

But she knew her gang. Most of all, she knew _Frank_. Not enough to know what’s going on with him exactly, but enough to know that something _is_ at least going on. He’s hiding more often than not, these days. Not avoiding the rest of them necessarily. But he slipped away during lulls rather than lounging around the lodge with the rest of them in between trials. He spent enough time riling Joey up to do something stupid, enough time playfully heckling Susie, and then he’s heading for the stairs without a word, up into his room where he’ll be until one of them needs something. It’s so casually done that Julie probably wouldn’t have thought anything of it. They were in close quarters, always in each other’s space - even when one was called into a trial, there were two others who were there to pester who’s left. Maybe he wants alone time, to sit on his musty-ass bed and listen to music without disturbance.

But then she notices marks adding new colors to the ink on his throat. Blues on purples, reds adding onto the reds already etched in.

She sees it, Frank _sees_ her see it. His mask is off and he doesn’t stiffen from his relaxed position on one of the used-to-be-plush couches in front of the fireplace. He just regards her with something that might be curiosity or apprehension. Not nervousness, Julie isn’t stupid enough to think that. Frank could give less of a shit if she got jealous over someone else. Their involvement ended when they buried that janitor maybe twenty yards from where they were sitting in the real world. 

So no, Julie does not get jealous. 

But when does he find the _time_? 

He never leaves the lodge without any of them, unless it’s for a trial. Maybe he’s been sneaking out, but she feels as if they might have heard him by now. Frank’s never been one for subtlety. He’s aggressively defiant and loudly confrontational, which is why he’s practically showing off what he’s been up to. Frank is not the type to slink out a window to avoid being asked questions.

Susie’s not one to leave such gruesome looking marks, and Julie would know by now if him and Joey were fucking. If Frank is adverse to subtlety, Joey is goddamn allergic to it. 

Not Susie, not Joey, and it sure as shit isn’t Julie.

Someone’s sneaking _in_ to the lodge, then.

Frank appears to be able to physically see the gears turning in Julie’s head. He’s been watching her the whole time and his eyebrows lift the second she comes to her realization.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?” She asks him, face carefully neutral. Her voice, however, betrays her, wobbling slightly with humor. It’s how Frank knows he’s allowed to smile; the lighter shade of his typical, shitty little grin.

“Don’t act shocked,” he tells her, sounding far too pleased with himself. “You’re too smart for that.”

And she is, that’s the thing. Julie is so fucking smart. Which is why the initial shock has melted away and the next step her mind takes is _who_? In reality, there’s so many different people that lurk in the fog that are Frank’s type - dangerous, thrilling, and probably not worth the risk. There were just as many who could slip in without the rest of the Legion noticing. Wraith could literally go invisible, the Nurse and the Spirit _phase-walk_ through time and space, then there’s the hulking masses of the Trapper and the Shape that could truly and honestly move without a sound when they wanted to. 

But Julie is fucking _smart_ , so she knows who it is. 

“You’ve got a death wish,” she finally says. 

Frank shrugs a shoulder, spinning his mask around so it’s smiling, then frowning, then smiling, frowning, smiling. “No shit.” 

Julie shakes her head with an incredulous scoff, reclining back into the couch. He keeps eyeing her and the lit fireplace brightens the anticipation waiting there. The marks on his neck mean two things. Frank, while a known piece of shit, still cares about them in the ways that he could. He made a point to show off these hickeys to Julie, not because he’s going to stop if it upsets her. It’s just a courtesy. It would suck more to do something behind her back. Something like _this_ at least, because all of them know Frank hides shit from them. Leader privileges. It’s whatever.

But the second thing this means is that goddamn Frank is fucking the Ghost Face. Because why wouldn’t he be?

“For how long?” It’s a fair question. She wants to know how long someone’s been coexisting with them without a single one of them ever catching on. 

The mask stops spinning on a grin and after a moment, Frank matches it. _I don’t know_ , their smiles say. 

Julie kind of wishes that was unsettling. 

2.

“C’mere, you _fuck_!”

Jeff does not c’mere. He throws himself through the closest window and just narrowly dodges the knife that swiped at his back. It’s a gritty, jagged blade - he knows this because it’s already caught his side. The slice has been bleeding sluggishly for the last few minutes, but it didn’t start out that way. It poured blood at first, gushed and wept enough for Jeff to stumble into a cluster of trees and try his hand at wrapping it with his tattered jacket. It’s how the hooded killer found him so easily - he’d pinched the skin together too hard and yelped before he could stop himself, then the Legion was on him like a gnat on guts. 

The wooden floorboards thunder with Jeff’s footsteps, then with the killer’s. He’s gaining on him, Jeff doesn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that. Behind him, the Legion’s breathing is loud. Excitement. Not exertion. 

Jeff keeps his eyes on the locker on the other side of the hall. He doesn’t let himself get scared.

The locker gets close enough to touch, close enough to wrench open the door. He doesn’t. Jeff fakes it, stops just long enough in front of it to hear the Legion’s breath hitch in glee, then he dives to the left and around the doorframe to the exit of the small shack. 

The Legion doesn’t change direction fast enough, clearly not expecting this. His head jerks in Jeff’s direction but his path remains straight - toward the locker and, in turn, directly into the locker door as it’s flung open. 

It cracks against the plastic of the Legion’s mask and he’s flailing backwards, landing on his ass with a shout. It’s angry and pained and Nea seems to relish every second of it as she steps out from the inside of the locker. 

“Idiot,” she spits at the killer before she’s off at a full sprint out the same doorway Jeff is now hiding around. 

The Legion lets out a short scream of frustration. Jeff can just barely see him rip his head from his hands and shake off whatever residual blurring his vision was suffering from. He scrambles on the floor for a moment, gathering his knife and climbing back to his feet. When he passes Jeff without even a glance in his direction, he’s panting, every breath ending in a huffed growl. 

He waits, watches the Legion’s back disappear into stalks of corn, listens for the receding footsteps. Even after they’re gone, Jeff stays still for another moment or two. He doesn’t want to get caught patching himself up again. He wouldn’t survive another encounter with an open wound this bad. 

So he slips back inside the building and shrugs off his jacket to shred it up some more. Strips of fabric wind around his lower chest, over his ribs. The rasp of the windbreaker material is a hell to experience against the exposed flesh and it takes everything in Jeff’s heart and soul not to cry out again. He tears his gaze away from the wound as he ties off the makeshift bandages in an effort to make it hurt less. _Out of sight, out of mind_ , he’s hoping. 

The pain doesn’t go away, of course, but it dulls just a little when his attention catches on something small left on the ground. Jeff kneels down, careful of jostling his tender cut, and reaches for it.

It’s an ID, newish and - not Canadian? 

Jeff looks closer, thinking maybe bloodloss skewed his eyesight, but no. No, this ID does not belong to one Frank Morrison. Not Julie, not Joey, not Susie. Jeff had known them all before he’d been dragged to this hell. He’d spent a few hours with them, let them watch as he worked on Frank’s commissioned mural. He’d seen all their faces, heard their voices, and even the years in between that day and the one where he’d been dropped in a trial with one of them as a killer wouldn’t make him forget. 

The face looking back up at Jeff, smiling in a portrait set against a warm orange background, was no one from the Legion. 

But this had to have fallen from one of the Legion’s pockets when he’d hit the floor. Jeff would have seen this as he ran in, would have kicked it across the room as he headed for the locker. 

So why the hell did Frank have this Danny Johnson’s ID?

Could he have been an old victim? Someone he and his Legion had off’d before they crossed the Fog? Had to have been a tourist - there’s no way the Legion had made it out of Ormond and even if they did, they definitely wouldn’t have gone to Florida. Jeff finds himself staring at the picture of the man intently, taking in the admittedly average features. Brown hair, brown eyes, straight nose, pleasant smile. 

What had this man done that would have turned this group of kids into killers? 

A sharp pain registers in the back of Jeff’s head and it’s how he finds out he’s been punched. When he opens his eyes, he’s splayed out on his side and that hurts, too. His stab wound screams along with him. Then a weight falls onto his stomach, forcing him onto his back and cutting off his yelling. It doesn’t stop the pain, though, especially when the Legion’s knee digs into it.

Jeff sees the knife above the grinning mask and it comes down fast, so he closes his eyes before it gets too close. _Out of sight, out of mind_ is a crock of shit. He screams again. 

The knife gets left in his shoulder and he feels his hand get wrenched open, the ID being taken from his grasp. Jeff groans, doesn’t fight it, looks up in time to see the Legion regard the ID for himself. He swipes at the front of it with his thumb, wiping off Jeff’s blood, and Jeff can’t see the expression on the killer’s face. He can’t see if there’s regret or validation or anger. He just stares at the small photo for what feels like minutes and Jeff’s heart is pounding in his ears. 

Finally, the Legion pockets the ID. Slips it somewhere inside of his leather jacket like it’s something he doesn’t need to think about. Practiced. He then grabs the hilt of his knife still lodged in Jeff’s shoulder, yanks it out, and Jeff barely manages a grunt of pain. 

In the seconds that follow, his vision goes black around the edges, red in the middles. His breathing shudders and it’s hard to push from his chest. In an act of inhuman strength, the Legion drags him up enough to drape Jeff across one of his shoulders. By the time he’s being dropped onto the hook, he’s barely conscious. But even when he wakes up, he’s still wondering the same thing he was when he’d bled out in an open field. 

Who the fuck was Danny Johnson to the Legion?

3.

Rules were not something Joey had become fond of as of late, but even he knew that some things were better left unbroken.

Luckily there weren’t many in the Entity’s realm. Just a few simple ones the being seemed to have set Itself - don’t kill any of Its play things. When a survivor is bloodied at your feet, you do not finish the job, no matter how loud their wailing is or how pitiful their breathing becomes. You’re to drag them to the closest hook and look away if you must, if the long, black-slick appendages from an unseen force unsettle you that much. The hunt is yours, but the bodies belong to It. Pissing off the spider in the sky just isn’t worth the trouble. 

There’s a few other one’s that’d been set by the rest of the killers themselves. More easy one’s like _Don’t touch the Pig’s snout_ and _Don’t touch the Trapper’s shit_. If you just so happen to hear another Killer’s real name, do not use it. Everyone and their mother knows who Micheal Myers is. Does that mean Joey is going to call him anything other than the Shape? No. He appreciates having a stomach that doesn’t have knife wounds. 

But in his impressive seventeen years - and however long after that spent in trials - of life, Joey has come to learn that the best kind of rules are the ones you make for yourself. 

The Legion had established one particular rule not long after their arrival. At first, they didn’t spend a whole lot of time away from their pocket of existence, keeping the Lodge between them and the others. When they did eventually begin venturing out, interacting with the others among them, they did it together. Not giving the rest a chance to take advantage of an individual. 

It’s how Frank had heard Freddy - _the Nightmare_. Joey and Julie hadn’t heard it at all, and Susie had been deathly quiet even before the incident. To this day, Frank won’t admit to what the freak had said. When asked he would scowl and bite out something along the lines of _Fuck off, Joey_ or _Forget it, he won’t do shit_. If Susie had heard it, she wasn’t budging, either. 

Even without knowing, when Frank had pounced, the rest of the Legion had, too. Joey just remembers seeing the older boy’s head snap over to the demon, remembers seeing the glint of his knife. He’d moved on instinct, grabbed for Freddy’s arms before he could swipe at Frank as he dove for him, as well. It wouldn’t have meant much, either way. Julie proved that day that a bladed glove does very little when it’s lodged somewhere between your spine and pelvis. 

In his arms, the Nightmare kicked and hissed and still managed to laugh, even when Frank pressed up close. The point of his knife dug into the bludging, shiny skin of the other killer’s neck. Joey was so close to them, lined up against Freddy’s back to make sure he wouldn’t try anything, so he could hear what Frank said to him. 

“Come near her - near _any_ of us - I’ll pull out your insides and leave you to fucking dry.” 

Freddy snickered at that and it was a wet, ugly sound. He went to say something else, but the Legion leader’s spare arm reached around and Joey could feel movement against his side. There was a creaking noise, a crunching and bloody noise. Freddy screamed through whatever words he wanted to hiss. 

The other killers had watched this interaction and not a single one had attempted to stop them. They let them go without a word, too, and only one or two of them casted a glance to Freddy’s body where Joey had let it fall to the grass. Frank had stalked off immediately after, didn’t wait for the others before heading for the edge of the forest where the Fog would swallow him up.

This is where their rule had been made - _nobody fucks with the Legion_. Short, to the point, and well enforced. The rest of the killers followed it, not out of genuine fear, Joey knew. He wasn’t delusional to think someone like the Oni would ever fear four kids with knives. But they all could at least agree that it wasn’t worth the trouble. After that brief altercation, Freddy wasn’t seen in a trial long enough to be odd. He didn’t show back up to the campfire for even longer, but when he did he still sneered and laughed at the Legion. 

It was a middleground. The Nightmare could do whatever he wanted, but at a distance. 

A simple rule; _nobody fucks with the Legion_.

And it seems like _this_ fucking guy missed the memo. 

Joey creeps closer, edging just far enough to peek through the crack of Frank’s bedroom door. The lodge had been as quiet as it could get at this time of night. The wind whipped against the dilapidated walls of the building, whistling against window panes. But Joey had been straining his ears for the past ten minutes. He’d left his walkman on his bed, hadn’t bothered to pause the music because he was only going to piss. He’d be back within the minute.

He _was_ back within the minute, but his walkman wasn’t waiting for him. A quick look around, searching underneath pillows and throwing his blanket up to maybe dislodge it, came up with nothing. The light switch is on the other side of the room so he held his breath and stood still, waiting to see if he could hear his music muffled somewhere. 

It’s how he heard the creak on the floorboards above him. Frank’s room. 

This was odd. Joey’d passed his room as he’d left the bathroom. The older had been out, sprawled on his stomach and breathing deeply. And when he was out, he was _out_. Either something had woken Frank up - 

Or something was in the lodge. 

So, Joey’d made his way upstairs again as quiet as he could manage, avoiding spots that made noise. He’d thought he’d done a pretty good job, thought that his soundless ascent would catch the intruder by surprise. 

But Ghost Face was already watching the doorway when Joey looked in, standing over Frank like a fucking phantom. 

At first, he’s too shocked to do anything, too surprised at the boldness - the _audacity_ \- of the fucker to be standing right there for Joey to catch. Like he isn’t afraid of the consequences, like he isn’t afraid of being caught. Like he’s been planning on this the whole time. 

Slowly, Ghost Face raises a hand, and in it is Joey’s walkman. The sight of it is more alarming than the figure’s usual knife would have been. Joey feels his eyes widen - _because how did the son of a bitch get there and here so fast? -_ and amusement becomes evident in the lines of Ghost Face. His shoulders bounce in a silent chuckle. His head tilts to the side and around the walkman, he moves his fingers in a childish kind of wave. 

That spurs Joey back into action. He glares at the figure, narrows his eyes and grits his teeth, ready to hiss out a threat or a curse or some sort of insult. 

But then there’s rustling from the bed, Frank shifting from his stomach onto his side - in Ghost Face’s direction. Joey sees his eyes open, sees Frank blink blearily up at the figure. Ghost Face looks down at him, as well, apparently deeming Joey not an immediate threat. He would have continued advancing, would have shown the piece of shit that that’s something he’s wrong about. 

Frank’s voice stops him, mostly because it’s not directed toward him. 

“W’the fuck’re you doing?”

Ghost Face doesn’t make a sound. He lowers Joey’s walkman so it’s out of sight and just gazes down at the other. Joey doesn’t know how Frank is so calm; the mask is unsettling as hell. 

“Fine,” is all he says, irritation dampened by the sleepiness in his voice. “Stay over there, then.” He pulls the blanket up and over his head as he rolls back over onto his stomach. It’s quiet for a moment, both Ghost Face and Joey watching the lump on the bed. Then, finally, Frank yawns out, “Freak.” 

Joey can’t fucking believe a second of what’s happening.

Ghost Face lifts his head, mask’s downturned eyes leveling Joey with its stare. _You might want to leave_ , it tells him. 

Joey can’t _fucking believe it_.

He turns around, quick as he can be without making too much noise. He doesn't think he wants Frank to know he’s just witnessed what - what Joey can only call a secret fucking rendezvous. His mind feels numb with shock and it isn’t until he’s standing at the foot of the stairs at the bottom floor to realize he’s walked passed his room. 

Julie’s there, stoking the never-ending fire. She looks up from the pit and takes in his expression. Just as she’s about to ask what the fuck has him so riled up, the floorboards way, _way_ above them creak. 

And then they creak again.

They’re both staring at each other. Joey’s got his mouth open but he’s not saying anything. Julie’s waiting for him but obviously hoping he doesn’t say a goddamned word. So he doesn’t. He snaps his mouth closed and goes back upstairs. 

On his bed, when he makes it there, is his walkman. The music’s stopped and when he grabs it, presses play, it picks up right where he left off. Without thinking about it, he pulls his headset over his ears and blasts the volume, successfully drowning out everything else - including the sounds above him and any thoughts about them.

**Author's Note:**

> do i think frank is sentimental and keeps photos of his lovers just to have? no. do i think he's possessive and weird and steals shit like a driver's license from his lovers to have and tough shit for them if they want it back? sure, i could see it.
> 
> also yes freddy did say smth nasty abt susie, i didn't want to explicitly write it bcuz yknow fuck that


End file.
